FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FORTY YEARS OF HUNTING, VICTOR HAD failed to get his deer.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. In retirement he had nothing but time. He could hunt every day if he wanted to, and for most of the fall and winter, this was exactly what he did. The results were disappointing, a succession of inexplicable near misses. He blamed the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Early in the season, after a close call with a game warden, he’d switched to bow hunting. （In Pennsylvania, even a convicted felon was permitted to own a bow.） This should have posed no problem, and in other years it hadn’t. But in the winter of 2015, for reasons Victor couldn’t fathom, he did not get his deer.
The third week in January, on the final day of archery season, he’d set out in darkness. A fresh snow had fallen, ideal for tracking. The moon was bright and full. High on the ridge north of Garman Lake, he settled in. An ideal spot, patchy forest with good sightlines. Time and again, it had proved lucky. A dozen deer had met their ends here. His shooting spot was so extremely lucky that Victor had kept it secret for twenty years. He’d have revealed its location only on his deathbed and only to his son, if he had one. Being sonless, he would carry the secret to his grave.
But this time, luck failed him. He waited two full hours and spotted nothing. This late in the season, the population had thinned. He was about to give up when he glimpsed, in the periphery, a flicker of movement. A sleek little doe nosed at the ground beneath a stand of bushes. Too small and too far, Victor decided, and did not take the shot.
The doe wandered off and then came back, closer this time. She paused a moment, broadside, as though daring him to take the shot.
He took the shot.
He would regret it later, but at the time he couldn’t help himself. The doe was taunting him. She was at most—at most!—fifteen yards away.
The doe sprang up high, then crashed into the bushes. Victor scrambled to his feet.
Fifteen yards away, the bushes were still moving, but the doe was gone—immediately and completely, as though she had never existed. On the snow was a round blood spot the size of a ripe plum. Victor bent and touched a finger to it.
Deep dark blood. Good hit.
He plowed his way into the bushes, stiff and ungainly, a slow, lumbering creature on two feet.
The sun was rising now, the doe’s tracks clearly visible. Her hooves had barely nicked the snow. At regular intervals the ground was spotted with blood, brighter now. The effect was festive and strangely beautiful, like rose petals in the snow.
North of the ridge, without warning, the trail disappeared. How was it even possible? No blood, no hoofprints. It was as if the doe had been whisked into a helicopter.
Victor retraced his steps.
How had he missed her in the first place? A stationary creature, standing broadside, barely fifteen feet away.
He tracked the doe for a solid hour and never found her, a fact that shamed him. Somewhere north of Garman Lake, his doe was bleeding out.
In the end he slunk back to the house empty-handed. No luck? said Randy.
Victor said, I didn’t see a goddamn thing.
HE DROVE AWAY FROM LUTHER’S FEELING SATISFIED. HIS TRUCK felt heavy, sated, its rear end anchored to the road by the generator’s weight. He’d brought along a couple of two-by-fours to fashion a ramp; with the help of Luther’s neighbor, he’d pushed the generator up the ramp into the truck. He would come back later with a cord of firewood from Randy’s back forty, a massive dead tree they’d cut in the fall.
When he arrived back at the cabin, the front door was unlocked. Unlocked! Immediately his adrenaline kicked in, the fight-or-flight response. He doubled back to the truck and took his EDC from the glove box. He crossed the living room on tiptoe and crept down the hall.
In the office he found Randy sitting at the computer. “Jesus Christ, Victor! Don’t shoot!”